Thursday, 21 November 2013

Yeah! Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide....... (Dzolalians will continue)

Great Ketasco is 60 and her children can't wait to celebrate how far she has come. Is been a great one passing through the walls of Ketasco for me and all "Dzolalians". I was in Ketasco from October 2008 to June 2012 (Kotoka House).

From the image above no need for me to talk. Be there in your numbers. Hope to meet both old and new Dzo lali folks.

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

If you are not in Ghana and reading this am 100% sure you've never heard of the word trotro.

mate used here is the name of the one who helps the trotro driver, collecting lorry fare from passengers and others.

Trotro I will say is a major means of transport. I love taking trotro's a lot. I was thinking I name this post Aflao - Ho, Ho - Aflao #trotro experience since, the experience from Aflao to Ho to was funny and interesting too.

Aflao to Ho...

Leaving Aflao for BarCamp Ho in October, At 5 AM, getting out of my house and the shouting Ho! Ho!! that morning the driver of the trotro just applied the break and I jumped inside happily thinking it was full of people going to Ho. Not knowing all of them were going to Dzodze. After Dzodze, the driver and mate's eyes became hot since they were not getting passengers as we move.

Well luckily we got one passenger on board, he was heavily drunk. He started telling driver he was over speeding. Soon another passenger, a male, also got on board. As we were going another trotro who was also looking for passengers along the Dzodze - Ho stretch came to by pass us.

My driver was like ahhhh! lol. All these passengers were not going to Ho, so the drunkard alighted first as he continues to sing his destination to the mate. Now the second guy alighted and presented GHS 50.00 to the mate. The driver nearly died. Haha! If you know the way I was laughing.
So we have to wait for him to quickly get money from a koko seller near by. And the driver was telling me, some people are not serious oo. Laughing all together.

Off we go and another drunkard again. Oops!. They will enter the vehicle before you can tell. This one wasn't having money to pay the lorry fare. But sat down quietly. Now time for him to alight. He was telling the mate, he will get the money at his destination and pay. Then the driver roared: "If you don't pay, I will drive you to Ho" can you imagine? Ho is very far from where we were at that moment. And how will he get back. He alighted and was playing nonsense, so the driver instructed the mate to remove his pair of shoes and let's go. Still laughing at the way the mate and drunkard were displaying. A woman at the roadside came to his rescue, paid for him and off we go.

The driver managed to by pass the other trotro driver before we reached called Ziope. He was telling I really wanted to reach Ziope before that driver, if not wahala for him. Still laughing.

Got to Ho safely and said bye to the driver and still laughing.

Take #Trotro sometimes and see. You will laugh aaa.. Still laughing..
— Enock Seth Nyamador (@Enock4seth) October 26, 2013

Now is Sunday and time to leave home (Aflao) Here the #trotro experience I never had started from.
Getting to Ho main lorry station at 6 PM, I decided to enter the first car available going to Aflao. Things didn't work normally like how you enter a trotro. Trotro always set off before you start paying to the mate. We paid before we set off. Some women were complaining.

After paying already, this driver without a mate took us to a filling station to fill his fuel tank. Instead of him doing that earlier.

Then something happened the guy at the Filling Station was seriously talking on the mobile phone, so with less attention on business the fuel poured on to the ground. The driver want him to give out GHS 2.00 for the fuel on the ground. He disagreed and was saying : "It was the fuel tank of the vehicle that was leaking."
This went on for some minutes, I was only thinking of getting home as early as possible.

We were in the vehicle for about 30 minutes drive out of Ho township, then OOH! The car just started slowing down in a manner that you will know something is definitely wrong.

OMG! When will I get home. :(
— Enock Seth Nyamador (@Enock4seth) October 27, 2013

Then Driver: We can't move on, there is something wrong with the engine belt. I was like hey! Then we all started complaining. One of the women said: "It was because the car was not in good form, that was why they were doing things secretly at the station."

Luckily for us it was just a few metres away a Police Barrier and houses were around. I felt very sad for a woman who was actually concerned about how her children are doing back home at that moment.

We were there for about 30 minutes, it was even going to rain and we were all saying if it get serious will just enter the vehicle. The driver talk to one of the drivers back at the station. Soon a vehicle arrived.

I use Tigo. Yes I started using Tigo before I even got some "alatsa" phone to but the SIM card into it way back before 2008. I use Tigo for everything from tweeting via SMS to surfing the web.

Recently Tigo Ghana's network in Aflao has become a great problem you can't talk of.

After 23 hours of NO network I think things are ok now. Thanks @TigoGhana, but do better in Volta Region.
— Enock Seth Nyamador (@Enock4seth) November 4, 2013

It goes off anytime and comes on when it likes. The worst one was for two good days. Whenever I complain the lady(s) will always tell me "There is currently no problem in your area" It pains me like how Rancho's question pained Virus for years. (3 Idiots movie)

Recently, there was another failure, no failures. And is the one that pained me most, I was having 2.7 GB of internet data and left with few days to expire. Due to these failures I wasn't able to use what I used to finish a week, sometimes two weeks.

I can't access Gmail on my @TigoGhana modem data for a some days now. My data will be taken after all these days of network fluctuation. :(
— Enock Seth Nyamador (@Enock4seth) November 3, 2013

I see some little changes, Gmail opened, but what will I do? left with 2.7 GB data and it will all be taken on the dot tomorrow.
— Enock Seth Nyamador (@Enock4seth) November 3, 2013

@Enock4seth efforts are underway to rectify the situation,we apologize for any inconvenience caused. Thank you for your patience.
— Tigo Ghana (@TigoGhana) November 3, 2013

I got to twitter and started tweeting @TigoGhana, I even sent Tigo an email about the problem, my disappointment and this blogpost but no reply. In fact my eyes were red. The 2.7 GB data that will be taking for FREE, like FREE BONTO.

After the network has been fixed, I called someone, then I received a notification, "Your last call was in SpecailZone" quickly I called the customer care line (always a lady, I don't know why?) to checkout what that actually mean. Our conversation:

(Tigo Customer Care) TCC : Hello, this is blablah of Tigo and how may I help you?

me: Hello, my name is Enock calling from Aflao. I just called someone and received a notification "Your last call was in SpecialZone" and want to know what is about?

TCC: OK. Enock please can I put you on hold and check what the problem is? (She was trying to answer after sometime before this)

Advertisement : Free Bonto!!!, No Wahala, blah blah

TCC: Hello, Enock, Thanks for staying on the line.

me : Welcome.

TCC : Where did you say you are calling from?

me : Aflao

TCC : You know what?

me : No

TCC : There was network problem in your area and that's why Tigo is compensating you.

me: Yeah! I know.

TCC: Please is there any other problem?

me : No.

TCC : Thank you for calling Tigo and have a nice day.

me . Same, Bye.

After ending the call, I said ah! I should have asked the lady, then why do they always tell me "Please there is currently no problem in your area"

Sunday, 3 November 2013

This guy saw me tweeting with #N1280 and was like, ahh! you kuraa are you mad?
— Enock Seth Nyamador (@Enock4seth) November 3, 2013

Borrowed from Google search

See the handset above, some friends call it my twitter computer. I can do everything related to twitter from this handset all via SMS thanks to Tigo Ghana for being a long time supporter of Twitter SMS. But these days Tigo Ghana is messing up with us in the Volta Region and I have a blog post for them soon.

I do most of my tweeting via SMS especially during #FiestaDebate, on the road and when am not with a PC.

You might be wondering how actually does this work. Well, am writing this because my days of this handset are numbered. lol ;-). hehe!

Here is how I do things via SMS.

1. Everything I tweet is sent to short code 40404 and it gets pushed to my twitter account. I see it to be faster than normal tweeting sometimes.

2. I receive text notifications whenever am mentioned, some retweet or favorite my tweets, new follower, new DM (Direct Message) and tweets from people whose notifications I have enabled myself. (one of such people is @Abocco, no day without SMS heh!. lol)

3. I can send DM, view people's profile all via SMS.

To send a DM here is the syntax:

m @handle [message]

say I want to send a DM to @kpogadziboy, with message "Hello Boy" I simply text:

Friday, 1 November 2013

BarCamp Ho 2013 saw many mentors and barcampers, some of these mentors include Leila Djansi the director of the Sinking Sands movie and others. If you missed BarCamp Ho, then you didn't just missed something but alot you can't imagine.

There was speed mentoring as usual. Had my one and only speed mentoring with David Kotei Nikoi which was all about Tourism in Ghana. What Tourism actually mean, how we have not taken full advantage of tourism yet and how we can make it a better one. I really enjoyed this speed mentoring and was willing to go continue since speed mentoring is only 10 minutes interaction.

Then something happened. The "New Style" Speed Mentoring now Breakout or Group Mentoring. I don't know how to even put it ;-). Time was allocated immediately after the one-on-one speed mentoring for this:

So I have to go back to my favorite "Tourism" again and it was great. I've learnt a lot.

Also, I organised a breakout session on putting Ghanaian contents on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. As we know most tertiary students especially those in the universities make good use of Wikipedia but none is ever ready to add to it. Read more about this breakout session on Planning Wikimedia Ghana's blog.

Since BarCamps are networking forums, I can't leave without meeting both new and old folks ;-), never!. The networking even starts before you get to the venue of the event. ;-) Here are some tweets for you: